Development Fallacy-Apocalypse Ritual.

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appropriate in the latter. Furthermore, we do know what the teaching of the Gospels and of the Epistles really is concerning Ritual, and we should offend against common sense, were we to allow the obscure and mystical representations of the Apocalypse to disturb that teaching. We speak of the visions of the Apocalypse supposed to bear on this subject as obscure, and such assuredly they are. If taken as literally applicable to our worship they must be taken literally throughout, and the result in that case becomes manifestly absurd. White robes are worn in heaven. Yes, but they are not worn by a class or an order. They are common to all who worship. If example accordingly is to be taken from that source, we have a right to ask-who gave our priests authority to appear in surplices to the exclusion of the people? Angels are said to burn incense as emblematic of the prayers of the saints. But angels are also said to cast incense abroad to summon up voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and earthquakes. Those who use incense for the one purpose should be competent to use it for the other—but are our living priests thus competent? The seven candlesticks are said to represent the seven churches. Yes, but the one candlestick representing a church, does not warrant the use of two as representing something else; and still less the use of candles as well as candlesticks, with the candles lighted at noon-day, and least of all the use of candelabra with provision for scores of candles to be so lighted. Further-John says of the heaven revealed to him, that he saw no temple therein,' and if the temple be unknown there, the furniture of the temple-candles, incense, and the like must be supposed to be unknown there; and accordingly it is said that in that world there is no need of ' a candle, nor of the light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth 'them light.'

But, in fact, it is not so much from the Apocalypse as from Paganism, and from Paganism of a very deteriorated sort, that our Ritualists get the models to which they shape their performances. The following extract will show in part both when and how the great change in this respect in church history was brought about.

'There are not a few persons whose imaginations present to them visions from remote times with which they are deeply fascinated. In the shadowy distances of bygone centuries they see or think they see a long line of prelates and priests and their attendants, clothed in pure white, and adorned with the rich emblems which the taste and piety of those days are supposed to have regarded as appropriate in the sacred office. As it is with the persons of the ministers, so is it with the edifices in which they serve, and with all parts of their

ministrations. Everything in that distance is stately, ornate, gorgeous. The communion-table has become an altar, and on or about the altar are devices in all forms and in all colours, brightened with gold and made brighter still with artificial lights. Incense fills the air, processions with crucifix and banners pace the ancient floor, choral music reverberates along the lofty roof, and mystic rites and genuflexions of many kinds help to shroud religion in mystery, and to fill the souls of the untaught multitude with awe, with the dread natural to ignorance and helplessness. Looking only on the outside of this spectacle, and being willing to believe the best concerning its tendencies, and concerning the sanctity of the men who present it, imaginative and sensitive minds, with a considerable touch of romance in them, flatter themselves that in their love of such ancient things, and in the æsthetic pleasure they derive from them, they have found a religion the religion they have long wished to find.

But there is another side to this picture. Unhappily the state of society which Christianity had to influence during more than the first thousand years of its history, was very unfavourable to its own purity. The virtues necessary to preserve the Roman republic had failed. It was no more. The decline of the Roman empire began with its beginning. Under its hard military rule, the characteristics of society were unsettledness, sensuousness, and decay. The confusion and misery which attended the great struggle between the barbarian strength of the north, and the corrupt civilisation of the south, were such, through many generations, as the world had not seen.'

The church had her good men, her great men, in those times; but such were the times. Here then were the materials on which Christianity had to operate during more than ten centuries:

First, it had to deal with a civilisation which seemed to have made man more the child of evil than it had found him, and in the next age it had to curb a turbulent rudeness not much above the level of savage life. We know what followed. Christianity had in some degree Christianised the Roman civilisation before it was to pass into the history of modern nations. But in this process its own purity suffered very materially. It was so in respect to doctrine and polity. It was especially so in matters of ritual. And it should never be forgotten that under the Roman empire some two-thirds of the people were slaves to the one-third, and that all the demoralising effects of that institution, both on slaves and slave-owners, were not only on the surface of society, but were settled down deep in its heart.

'Now it was in this sort of society that the Catholic church, as it is called, gave to its organisations the form they were to assume, and to its ritual the complexion that was to distinguish it. The mass of the people, from generation to generation, were grossly ignorant, were rarely more than half converted, and were in the hands of a clergy often little more instructed, little more christian.

Whence it is-what it does.

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'Such, however, were the times to which our Anglo-Catholies are now looking with special reverence and affection-times in which the dregs only of the old civilisation were in action, and in which the new civilisation presented many more signs of barbarism than of culture. The old ordar of things had lost the power it once possessed. The new had not realised the power it was ultimately to attain. Decay, weakness, or immaturity characterised all things secular. Nevertheless, these are the times-times in which everything was either dying or in rude transition-that we are expected to look to as to a model age, competent to elaborate the forms of religion with such exactness, refinement, and wisdom, that it becomes us to sit at the feet of the men of those days, and to aim in respect to such things at nothing higher than to do as they did.'*

Persons who wish us to believe that it is religious reverence which prompts them to this folly, deceive themselves. True reverence for Jesus Christ would show itself in quite another manner. The New Testament is the will of our Lord-His testament; and how do men show their reverence for the will of the dead? Clearly by doing their best to ascertain what that will really was, and then by carrying it faithfully into effect, adding nothing to it, taking nothing from it. But in place of this, Ritualists call our attention away from the last supper as dispensed by Christ, and pointing to the stage-play of the popish mass they say-There, that, substantially, is how the thing should be done. Reverence! reverence for the will of the dead!

But the proceedings of such men betray as much want of reverence for the truth of Christ, as for his will in other respects. What but a low apprehension of the great facts which constitute the doctrines of the Gospel, could allow men to suppose that it is in their power to make those doctrines more clear and impressive by the tawdry milinery, and the theatrical inventions, which many are now bringing to them? True reverence, on the contrary, would compel them to shrink from any attempt of the sort, as from so much profanation. To expect more devoutness from gazing on a crucifix than from ascending in imagination the real Calvary, and seeing with the mind's eye the true cross and the living Sufferer, is to concede greater potency to fiction than to fact, to art at the command of man, than to the truth as used by God.

In reality there is a childish weakness underlying all such devices which may lead the feeble into superstition, but which must often drive the strong into scepticism. The clerical mind, unhappily, has been so far characterized by a narrowness, an

'Ritualism in the English Church,' pp. 57-61.

artificialness-an unnaturalness peculiar to it, as to have been the cause probably of more scepticism than has been produced by the most successful weapon ever wielded against the truth. The deeds of clerical intolerance present a terrible chapter in the story of the past; and the mischiefs done by clerical weakness may perhaps be ranged as next in magnitude. For men in general will conclude, that as the priest is, so must the religion be which he is separated to guard and uphold. Hence the scepticism so common among intelligent men in all Catholic countries. Such minds are not likely to be edified when obliged to regard their religious teachers as being either knaves or fools. We must not forget, however, that the condition of society among us is doing much to generate this religious trifling in the case of priests and people. We have come into an age of wealth. We live upon the sensuous. We move as amidst a glare of spectacle. Amusements everywhere present themselves under these aspects. Those who cater for the public taste in this way, know its tendencies, and minister to them in a manner which shows them to be wise in their generation. The old drama does not attract as it once did, but artistic and histrionic exhibitions of a worse kind have come into its place. Even our more harmless associations, and our home life, are affected by these things, and our church life comes more or less under this influence. Music, pageantry, spectacle, says the Ritualist, are everywhere, how natural that people should covet something of this kind in church. If we see them attracted widely to many other things by such means, why not attract them to religion by the same means. If it be possible to give to religion the charm of amusement and pleasure, why not so present it? So many who affect to be leaders in the Church, bow to the spirit of the world, and call it Lord. We do not say that all zealous Ritualists are of this type, but it is clear that very many are. They confess their policy in this respect, and make a boast of it.*

English Nonconformists, we trust, will continue to exercise their full liberty in giving such order and character to their services as shall be seen by them to be expedient and Scriptural. They must not symbolise, but they have large freedom without attempting anything of that nature. Their protest against superstition must not be allowed to render them insensible to the sacredness of sacred things. Religious reverence-calm, self-possessed, deliberate reverence, should mark everything we do in connection with religion. It behoves us to make it felt that man can get nearer to God without human ceremonies Missionary Aspect of Ritualism, in the Church and the World.'

Shakespeare in Domestic Life.

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than with them. The instrument of our power must be the Gospel, commended studiously and earnestly to the intelligence, and the moral consciousness of men. Where that work is done, the result cannot be failure.

If remedy is to come for what is amiss in the English Church, it will come, we suspect, not from the bishops, but from the laity of that Church. In the meantime we shall do well to be observant of what is passing. Were we at once to take political action on this question, it would not be difficult to show that as Englishmen we have a clear right so to do. Affairs indeed are drifting so fast in the wrong direction, and the hope of assistance from the quarter whence we have had a right to expect it is so little warranted by appearances, that we have no doubt as to the duty and expediency of a solemn and public protest on the part of Nonconformists on the subject, if they do not go immediately to the legislature in relation to it.

ART. IV.-Shakespeare's Sonnets, never before Interpreted; His Private Friends Identified: together with a recovered Likeness of Himself. By GERALD MASSEY. Longmans and Co.

AMONG the vexed questions that have engaged the literary world during the last thirty or forty years, that of Shakespeare's sonnets has held a conspicuous place. After having been all but forgotten for more than a century, these sonnets, when republished, so far from awakening admiration, seem to have been viewed by the blundering, self-conceited critics of George the Third's days actually with disgust, Steevens declaring that the strongest Act of Parliament would not be strong enough to compel their being read,' while Malone oracularly pronounces them a jumble of affectation, pedantry, circumlocution, and 'nonsense!' It was reserved for the deeper feeling, the clearer insight of the poet, to recognise and welcome these exquisite gems; and Wordsworth and Coleridge rejoiced as over the discovery of long-buried treasure, at the reappearance of Shakespeare's sonnets.

By both these true poets the sonnets seem to have been viewed as a miscellaneous collection. Dr. Drake, some sixty years ago, was the first to adopt what has been called the personal theory,' and it was he, too, who pointed out the Earl of Southampton as the 'friend' to whom the greater number were addressed. Mr. Boaden, who also advocated the personal theory, considered that the Earl of Pembroke was the friend, and in this opinion he is joined by Mr. Hallam. These discoveries,

NO. LXXXIX.